Daniel Rose - Larry's Kidney, Being the True Story of How I Found Myself in China

Dr. X pushes out his chair an inch. “I hook up how?”

“Self-sticking adhesive on the back.”

Dr. X loosens the muscles of his face, and for the first time I can see that it would be a pleasant face-that is, if we were on the same team as those well-nourished CEOs. “How many I can buy?”

“No need,” Larry says. “Once you give the word, I can have four dozen speeding their way to you, free of charge.”

Larry allows a small smile to squat on his lips. Dr. X does the same, filling the smile with the filter end of a Benson & Hedges cigarette that Larry leans to light, after which he leaves the Cosmos Club matchbook on the desk facing himself, so Dr. X has to strain a little to read it.

“I like the way this man think,” Dr. X says to no one in particular, exhaling yellow smoke, perusing the matchbook, exhaling smoke that’s even yellower a second time. “So to matter at hand. I need best kidney for this situation, suitable and young. I have already potential donor being check for disease, AIDS and so forth.”

“So wait,” I say cautiously. “Does this mean we’re moving forward?”

“I help you because you are friend of friend, but you keep secret top priority. I like Americans, but please, no more Americans! You getting last kidney in China.”

I mask my excitement by skimming my eyes over the medical tomes lined up impressively in the bookcase behind Dr. X’s head. A video titled Carnivore Babes is in among the tomes, making no effort to disguise itself. Jade maintains her blankness while her pupils make tiny flickering motions as though observing a Ping-Pong match under a microscope.

“We are peppering very many documents for permission to go through,” Dr. X continues. “Need strict order from high court. Paperwork in process for donor to sign, also his family, everyone be on same page, no coercion.”

I look over at Jade, who betrays not so much as a blink. I don’t need to look at Larry. I can hear the knuckles being cracked beneath his poker face.

I can hardly contain myself. “You pepper all the documents you need,” I say. “So do you mind if I ask who the donor is?”

“Bad-bad criminal,” Dr. X says. “Thirty-one years of age and already kill many people. Break in woman’s house, kill woman’s father, then decide he want no witness so come back and kill woman and woman’s baby. Very bad man!” he says with surprising vehemence. “I would kill him hundred times!”

Tick-tick…tock…

After a heated pause during which the toilet smell grows a little sharper, Larry and I choose the same second to both blurt out questions. I let him go first.

“Any way I can try out the kidney for a few weeks and get my money back if it doesn’t work?” Larry asks.

“Ho ho,” Dr. X says. “Like take for test drive!” Dr. X seems to enjoy the question. I’m the only one in the room, besides Larry, who knows that Larry isn’t joking.

My turn. “Any way I can see the operation?”

“See, how you mean?”

I mime adjusting the focus on a pair of binoculars. “See? Be in operating room to watch.”

Dr. X reacts as if I’ve uttered an ageless witticism. “Oh ho, equally funny. Not even in your country. Not anywhere in world. Surgeon get nervous, slash by mistake, bloody mess everywhere! Oh ho ho!” Dr. X says, leaning back to put his polished loafers on the desk. His eyes are more or less open when he swings his head in my direction. “You not such lousy fellows, you two!”

Even the grandfather clock seems to be enjoying our presence now. The glaze on the ceramic eagles, also the grins of the sheiks, seems to glint along with the bottles of show-off scotch. Besides me, Larry’s the only one in the room who knows I’m not joking.

I seize the opportunity to abet the surgeon’s good spirits with a measured amount of flattery.

“You are a young man to be in such a position of responsibility.”

“Only look young, perhaps!”

“Oh ho ho,” I say. “At the top of your game. And you have traveled the world, I see from the photos.”

“Oh, yes. I have been to your country six time. Conferences in Boston, Chicago, D.C., New York, Miami -”

“ Miami,” Larry says.

“My daughter goes to school in Miami,” Dr. X says.

Larry’s knuckle-cracking goes into double time.

“You know, of course,” I say, “that your patient, Larry, is a professor who lives just outside the Miami city limits. He is in a position to provide help for your daughter.”

“Oh, sank you,” Dr. X says, crushing out his cigarette eagerly in the soil of a plastic geranium.

“Whatever she needs,” Larry adds. “Jobs, references, apartments. I used to own a building not far from the water. Four apartments. They told me I needed to abide by rent control. I gutted the first three floors, made one jumbo apartment. Guess what? Bye-bye rent control!”

I glare at Larry. “But of course there will be rent control for your daughter,” I say.

“Goes without saying,” Larry says, glaring back at me. “This building wasn’t even in Miami, it was in Boston.”

“Whatever she needs,” I repeat. “And I myself live only a plane ride away!”

“Only a plane ride!” Dr. X is delighted by this.

“So we must host you the next time you come to visit your daughter. Larry can show you the best spots for food.”

“Oh, sank you very much.”

“You like sea cucumber?” I ask the surgeon. “Larry is something of an aficionado when it comes to sea cucumber. He knows the best restaurants for sea cucumber in all of Miami!”

“Oh ho ho,” Dr. X says cheerily. He actually rubs his hands together.

Larry’s not one to be outdone, unless it’s in his strategic interest to be so. “And of course you know that Miami is one of the major sea-cruise capitals of the world,” he adds.

“Yes?” Dr. X asks, anticipating happy tidings so acutely that he raises his eyebrows with pleasure. Handsome, handsome man, I decide.

“Yes. To look at my corn-fed appearance, you might think I’ve never ventured beyond the Bible Belt. Maybe just to Montreal to buy knockoff meds. But how wrong you’d be. I don’t think even Dan knows this about me, but I have taken numerous deep-discounted, spare-no-luxury cruises out of Miami, courtesy of one of my ex-students from Puerto Rico who now functions as a flack for one of the major liners.”

“I like cruise very much,” Dr. X says, wide-eyed. “To where they go?”

“They’re so cheap I don’t even ask where,” Larry replies. “She gets me special deals to the tune of two hundred and forty-five dollars per person including port charges for a week in a penthouse suite, outside balcony, marble tub with Jacuzzi, freebie shrimp cocktail at any hour, all the chocolate strawberries you can eat. Good for your head, all this luxury? Put it this way. For two forty-five, that’s the cost of a single psychiatric appointment, and which do you think will make you feel better about yourself? Bottom line: Anyone I say, she can set up with identical privileges.”

“Ooohhh,” Dr. X says, nearly speechless. “You are fortunate man in your connection, I see.”

“Not really,” Larry replies flatly. “She wasn’t anyone I even cared for, particularly. (By this I mean I never felt moved to Privately Tutor her. Very light-skinned, but still not my type. All I did was give her a ten-day extension, and she considers herself forever in my debt.)”

“But I share your zest for foreign experience,” Dr. X says.

“Oh, I see what you’re driving at,” Larry corrects himself. “No, no zest, not for me, not really. Travel makes me depressionistic. Matter fact, after I get home from this trip, if I ever step more than ten yards from my condo again, please shoot me.”